Why a USB flash drive is better than a banana

It is small and relatively cheap, and allows you to carry around a bunch of movies, TV series, photos, and PowerPoint presentations in your pocket.

This is handy if you want to give your friend some media and you both don’t own uncapped 100Mbps fibre connections.

The problem with all the free USB drives we get from companies is that they are usually 4GB or 8GB models, and are in the shape of the Statue of Liberty or some other design that does not let you plug it into a slot if any other connections are within 10cm of it.

So I bought a 64GB Samsung flash drive for the purpose of this review.

Unboxing

Every good review starts with an unboxing.

In box

Not in box

Testing

The USB said 64GB on the packaging, but when I plugged it into my PC it only gave me 59.7GB.

Someone in the office was talking about metric vs binary measurements and the difference between hardware space and the size of data, but I couldn’t hear them over the sound of my sobbing.

I was 4.3GB short – that’s at least one full HD movie, including the bonus scenes and director’s commentary, and a bunch of Randy Orton RKO GIFs.

Comparing Apples to Bananas to DVDs

I was quite upset about having 4GB stolen from me, but I decided to look on the bright side – the flash drive was still better at holding data than many other competing products.

As you can see below, an apple is much bigger than the USB drive and not as good at holding data.

USB drive – very small, can hold 30 1080p movies.

Apple – big, can hold zero 1080p movies. Also goes brown and soft if left exposed to oxygen.

I know what you are thinking: “I bet a banana is much better than an apple at USB flash drive stuff”.

Wrong.

First off, look at how much bigger the banana is than the flash drive. That’s not fitting in the little pocket inside the bigger pocket of your jeans.

Secondly, the banana broke apart when we tried to insert it into the USB slot on my laptop.

Then there is the classic DVD, but this was not even a contest.

I use the DVD drive on my laptop to warm up ham at my desk, so it does not work properly – but even if it did, I don’t want the sound of a helicopter taking off every time I plan to watch a video.

Also, if you leave a DVD in the tray and your laptop on at night, it will start spinning at maximum pace just to wake you up and remind you that you don’t own a USB drive.

Usability

One of the most important aspects of any tech products is how “consumer friendly” it is.

If the product is too complex to operate, there is a high barrier to entry for large segments of the market.

Fortunately, the USB drive was not too difficult to use.

I took the drive and tried to stick it in a USB slot, but it would not go in.

I turned it over, and tried again – this time it worked. This manoeuvre is shown below.

Overall rating

The Samsung USB flash drive is a great product, and I give it a 4/5 rating.

The only reason it lost a point was because it is a very small device, which I put down on my desk at home and now cannot find.